


Space Invaders 101

by mm_coconut



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-25
Updated: 2014-11-25
Packaged: 2018-02-27 01:01:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2673020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mm_coconut/pseuds/mm_coconut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Space Invaders?” Mack asked, and regretted it immediately.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Space Invaders 101

**Author's Note:**

> For a while, the working title on this was [TERRIBLE JERK OFF EUPHEMISM GOES HERE].

The post-mission drink-up was Hunter's suggestion from the very beginning, so it was safe to say that this was probably his fault as well:

"Your manual dext—dextr—fine motor problem must get in the way of other things too,” Hunter slurred at Fitz, nearly hitting himself in the face with his beer bottle while trying to emphasize his point. The motion gave him enough momentum to squeak sideways a little on the wheeled lab chair he was draped on. “A whole lot of things we take for granted, not just fiddling with wires. Like. Like writing. Using your phone. Putting on your clothes. Must be frustrating as hell.”

“Frustrating, definitely,” Fitz huffed, taking a deep gulp from his beer. He was still leaning against the lab bench behind him, letting more of his weight rest against it as his second beer seemed to hit him a little hard. Warm from the alcohol, Fitz had taken off his cardigan and undone another button on his shirt a little while ago. His fingers had struggled with the small button for a long minute, while Mack told himself not to watch. 

Mack was nursing a comfortable buzz with his fourth drink. He wasn’t sure exactly how many Hunter had gulped down, but they’d managed to go through two six-packs between the three of them.

“Opening a bottle. Or, hell, opening cans, with the fiddly, y’know,” Hunter flailed around a bit. “tab, the tab thingy.”

“Cans,” Fitz echoed, “tab thingies, yeah, they’re pretty awful.” Mack kept a careful eye on Fitz, looking for signs he was upset by the way Hunter held onto a potentially sensitive topic and wouldn’t let it drop, but Fitz seemed relaxed and at ease. 

“Eating utensils,” Hunter declared. “Fork and knife. Dessert spoons. Serving tongs.” 

“Chopsticks especially, you’re right,” Fitz said at the empty chair next to Mack.

“Doing up your buttons and your zip,” Hunter mused. “Pressing the right button on the remote. Picking your nose, maybe.” Hunter held up a finger and considered it intently, voice trailing off.

“Yeah, and wanking,” Fitz nodded. “Wait, no,” he said immediately, standing bolt upright. His mortified beer-blotchy glow evened out until his face was glowing entirely red.

The slightly alcoholic beat of silence stretched out.

“Blame it on the alcohol,” Mack tried to offer, voice gone a little hoarse. He tried to stop his brain as it flip-flip-flipped through images of Fitz’s clumsy hands on himself. “Let’s just—”

“God, yeah, _wanking_ ,” Hunter broke in, face horrified, ignoring Mack completely. He threw his head back and stared at the ceiling, swinging around in his chair. “I’d fucking miss jerking off. I’d be bloody frustrated, too, if I couldn’t rub one out.” He hummed, thoughtful. “Jack the beanstalk. Play a little five-on-one. Yank my doodle dandy.”

“Hunter, c’mon,” Mack said. Fitz was curling in on himself and staring at the ground. He clenched his beer tightly with both hands, knuckles going white as Mack watched.

“Chafe the carrot,” Hunter continued, relentless. “Grease my pole. Give myself a low-five. Tickle the one-eyed snake. Stroke my ego. Fluff my nutter. Play Space Invaders.”

“Space Invaders?” Mack asked, and regretted it immediately.

“Yeah, like, you’re grabbing your joystick, see, and then you _pew-pew-pew_.” Hunter demonstrated using both hands and a bottle balanced on his crotch, and Mack quickly blocked it from his memory. 

The beer bottle in Fitz’s hands made a loud, alarming series of sounds as it hit the edge of the lab bench and wobbled. Fitz fumbled it upright, set it down carefully, and ran from the room, clutching his cardigan in one hand and mumbling something that sounded like _You were right bonding was just great_ before Mack could try to apologize for Hunter.

“I hereby declare our first Post-Mission Drink-Up a rousing success!” Hunter announced, and Mack threw a handful of disposable pipettes at his head.

 

* * *

 

Mack tried not to think about it. He remembered the miserable hunch of Fitz’s shoulders, the way Fitz wouldn’t meet his eyes, the way he practically tripped over his own feet trying to escape the room. Fitz didn’t need Mack wondering about just how clumsy his hands really were. How frustrated they might be making him. 

He really tried not to think about it.

 

* * *

 

Fitz was talking over his shoulder again when Mack found him in the lab late the next morning.

“Why would you—why—I can’t believe you made me say that out loud!” Fitz hissed. He was hunched over a lab bench with a tangle of wires, tools, circuit boards, and other unidentifiable computer parts spread out in front of him. All the stuff that had been on the table last night before the drink-up were out of sight, probably put away in their cabinets. A simple circuit schematic was thrown up on a nearby holotable display in glowing blue lines, but Fitz’s glare was directed elsewhere.

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up over it, Turbo,” Mack said, and Fitz jumped. 

“Mack!” Fitz yelped. He grabbed some tools from the lab bench and immediately started pretending to use them. “I wasn’t. I wasn’t talking to, uh.”

“I know Hunter’s even more of an idiot when he’s drunk, but he wasn’t making fun of you, I promise,” Mack said, dropping into his chair. “He just has less of a filter, like most people when they get a little wasted. Also, he talks about his dick a lot. You can let him know I told you that.”

“I. Yeah. Okay,” Fitz said. Mack was relieved to see Fitz’s posture unclench a little and his mouth lose its humiliated slant from last night. 

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Mack offered, and Fitz nodded frantically. “What are you working on here?” Mack asked, changing the topic for the both of them.

“I’m working on my hands. Making them work better,” Fitz said, awkwardly gesturing with the tools. Mack’s eyes flicked to Fitz’s hands but he made himself look away and focus on what Fitz was saying. “Today I’m practicing, with the, uh, things I used to use. The, uh.” Fitz started muttering, getting stuck. He gestured at Mack with a screwdriver in one hand.

“Machines? Computer? Wires? Equipment?” Mack threw out, spacing them out to give Fitz a chance to accept or reject each one.

“That one! Equipment,” Fitz said. 

But then:

“Do you want a hand with your equipment?” Mack heard himself ask.

There was a fully sober beat of silence.

Mack kept his voice even. “I can sit around and hand you things. Or change up the display here when you need it,” he said, pointing to the schematic floating above the holotable.

“Only if you’re not busy,” Fitz said very carefully. His head twitched a little, like he was trying very hard to avoid looking at something behind himself.

For the next hour, Mack followed Fitz’s directions while he practiced with his hands. He listened as Fitz explained what he was working on—some sort of modified centrifuge?—and tracked the movement of Fitz’s hands as they started to put it together. For his part, Mack did the hand gestures to operate the holotable and retrieved components—and eventually, lunch—for Fitz. Towards the end, Fitz’s hands were so fatigued that he grudgingly asked Mack to steady them at the wrists while Fitz installed the final wires and cables. Fitz’s hands wavered as he pushed the connectors into place, and Mack could feel the sensation of each one sliding home, the click click translating through Fitz’s skin where they made contact with Mack’s palms. When Fitz snapped the last piece of the outer shell in place with a little _hah!_ and looked up to grin at him, Mack was already smiling. 

Mack spared a moment to be grateful that Hunter hadn’t been around to comment.

 

* * *

 

 _You sure handled his equipment_ , Hunter’s voice leered in his head later. Mack groaned out loud and threw a pillow at the wall. And didn’t think about hands fumbling with any kind of equipment.

 

* * *

 

“I’m not sure that this is really helping me,” Fitz said. 

“Of course it is, what’re you talking about? Video games help your brain and hands work together better. Internet says so. I think.” It was hard to divide his attention between holding a conversation, watching Fitz destroy enemy hostiles on the screen, and pretending not to watch Fitz’s hands. His fingers were mostly steady and accurate on the controller, but twitched uncertainly now and then. Mack jerked his eyes back to the TV.

When they’d first started playing Halo together, Fitz was straight up awful at it. He’d tried his best to listen to Mack’s directions on what buttons to press and how to aim the crosshairs, but impaired fine-motor skills plus zero experience with first-person shooters equaled Fitz’s player dying over and over and over again early on in every mission. Sick of watching Fitz grow more and more frustrated with himself, Mack had eventually scooted closer on the couch to put his hands over Fitz’s on the Xbox controller, lining up their fingers and nudging them into the right positions. This way, Mack could press Fitz’s fingertips, which pressed the buttons. Mack had shown Fitz how to fire and reload, how to change weapons, how to move the player and change camera angles. Fitz had watched and listened and let Mack teach him how to use the controller, and even if Mack’s blood pounded a little from feeling Fitz’s hands under his, he was careful to keep his breathing even. 

“I’m just not sure the skills will, uh. Spread, move…general? Generalize! I don’t think it’ll generalize to other skills. That are more useful in missions. SHIELD missions, not Halo missions,” Fitz said, cutting Mack off before he could make the joke, but sharing a lopsided grin with him anyway.

“Halo teaches you lots of skills,” Mack protested. “Hand-eye coordination. Teamwork. Battle strategy. The joy of a perfectly thrown plasma grenade. Something.”

“Yeah, but mostly I’m learning how to press buttons on a...a...” Stuck, Fitz wiggled the controller in his hands in Mack’s direction to get him to fill in the blank. 

Mack gave Fitz a moment to try to break through on his own. Fitz didn’t find the exact word he was looking for, but the word he did find left his mouth on a huge release of air: “A _joystick_.”

The air left the room. Mack knew, with a terrible calm clarity, that they were both replaying the same memory in their minds. _Pew-pew-pew_ , the TV volunteered as an alien gunned down Fitz’s player. Mack couldn’t look away as Fitz flushed red up to his hairline. If he concentrated, Mack could probably hear the pop of sweat breaking out on his own forehead. 

“How about we take a snack break,” Mack broke the silence, going for the ziplock of Oreos they kept hidden under the couch. Their knees knocked together gently as Mack crouched over to grab the half-empty bag. 

“Yes please,” Fitz said, perfectly willing to drop both the controller and the subject. He held out his hands. They jerked open and closed in an awkward gimme motion, out of sync with each other, palms a little red from holding the Xbox controller too tightly. Mack tried not to look at them.

 

* * *

 

Hands, clumsy hands, pulling at Mack’s shoulders. Scrabbling at couch cushions. Clenching around a joystick.

 _Get a hold of yourself, goddamn_. Mack dragged a hand over his face. Then had to use a rag to wipe the engine oil off his forehead. 

_Pew-pew-pew_ , Hunter’s voice agreed in his mind, and Mack threw the rag at the tool cart. 

 

* * *

 

“Turbo, it’s okay to be angry,” Mack said, laying a hand on the stiff line of Fitz’s shoulder. “It’s gonna take a lot of practice to build up that muscle memory.”

“I know, I know,” Fitz gritted between his teeth. He finally let go of the holotable projection, unable to pinch and flick his fingers to make the diagram scale and rotate the way he wanted it to, and ground the heels of his palms against his eyes. “I just want to be better at this _now_. I hate waiting, it just gets me more…more…ugh.”

“Angry?” Mack tried, but Fitz grunted and shook his head, hands flattening against his face and pushing into his hairline. “Impatient. Agitated. Frustrated—”

“That one,” Fitz burst out, pulling his hands away to look at Mack.

“Frustrated? You’re frustrated?” Mack said, and even as he said it, his stomach swooped. _oh no_ , it wrote in loopy cursive.

“I’m frustrated!” Fitz agreed, eyes bright. He clenched his hands and leveled a vicious glare at them, squeezing them so hard his whole body seemed to be pulled forward into a stiff curl. “My hands don’t work, and I am so. Bloody. _Frustrated_.” 

His mouth snapped shut.

In the familiar moment of silence that followed, Mack couldn’t look away from Fitz’s hands. They shook with how tightly Fitz was gripping them closed, and with the slight tremors that probably meant that Fitz had overworked them. He tried to stop watching as they eventually loosened and opened, unevenly, one a little slower than the other, fingers clumsy and uncoordinated. When they twitched and dropped to Fitz’s sides, Mack suddenly realized that Fitz was watching him. 

Fuck. “I’m just gonna—” 

“When you, uh. With Halo,” Fitz interrupted. “The way you showed me how to use the…the…”

“Controller,” Mack cut in, maybe a little more quickly than he should have. He wasn’t sure where Fitz was going with this. 

“I used to learn on my own. Independently,” Fitz continued, and Mack is totally lost, but he doesn’t interrupt again. “I just understood things in…intuitively. And my hands always knew what to do. But after this,” Fitz said, waving at the side of his head, “I’ve had to change the way I learn things. My hands don’t do exactly what I want them to do anymore. I have to practice, over and over again, to retrain my muscle memory.” 

Fitz stepped forward to take Mack’s hand. He layered it over his own smaller hand, lined their fingers up thumb to thumb, pinky to pinky, and he knew Fitz had to be able to feel Mack’s pulse pounding where his wrist was pressed against the back of Fitz’s hand.

“I learn better now if I start with, with a model. Hand over hand, like with the, um, controller.” He wiggled his fingers slightly to demonstrate, as if he were pressing phantom buttons, and Mack’s fingers followed along, curling over Fitz’s as they moved. “And, I think I see you looking at me,” Fitz said, uncertain. “Or maybe I’m just seeing things, like—”

Holy shit, this was Turbo making a move. “No, I’m definitely looking at you,” Mack said firmly. He kept his voice steady, not willing to let Fitz doubt for a second what was happening between them. He pressed their hands together a little tighter, leaned a little closer, and Fitz jerked his head up and looked at Mack, eyes wide. 

“Good. That’s. Good,” Fitz said, breathless, his gaze skipping between Mack’s mouth and his eyes. He inched forward, shoulders squaring up, growing bolder. “That’s. In that case, I’m going to, if you don’t mind,” and Fitz tipped his head up, and Mack tipped his head down, and suddenly, finally, they were kissing. 

Mack eased his lips over Fitz’s, and Fitz’s response was gratifying: a deep groan, a hand fisted into the front of Mack’s shirt, a tongue against his. He tugged Fitz closer with one hand spread across his lower back, the other hand cupping the back of his head. He kept his touch easy and undemanding, keeping in mind not to push, not to move faster than Fitz wanted. 

“So let me know if I’m moving too fast,” Fitz said, breaking the kiss with a wet sound, flushed red and grinning, talking fast now, “but what I was leading up to with that speech was: do you want to come to my room and give me a hand with, um. With.” He tapped at Mack’s chest with the hand gripping the front of his shirt. 

“With,” Mack repeated dumbly.

Fitz…squirmed. “I want you to help me play Space Invaders,” he blurted.

 

* * *

 

“I can’t believe you tried to use that line on me, Turbo,” Mack panted, sitting on the edge of the bed completely naked, clothes having been pawed off him in record time the second the door was closed. He yanked Fitz’s pants open.

“It worked, though,” Fitz protested, eyes dragging over Mack’s body, hands busy on his own clothes. He fumbled open the first few buttons on his shirt, then pulled it over his head without unbuttoning the others. “I got my point across. More or less. God, you look good. Sit up there.”

Mack sat up at the head of the bed as directed while Fitz kicked his pants off, until he was in just T-shirt and boxers, which were already tented in front. Fitz tumbled onto the bed and kneeled between Mack’s spread legs, grabbing at his arms and leaning forward to lick into his mouth with a loud _nnf_. Fitz was all eagerness and hungry touches, and Mack pushed into the press of his mouth and his wandering, clumsy hands the way he’d been wanting to for weeks. Mack slid his hands under the back of Fitz’s shirt, feeling out the curves of his shoulder blades. He dragged his nails gently down Fitz’s spine; Fitz arched hard and tongued at Mack’s lower lip, groaning as Mack ended the touch with a double-handed squeeze of Fitz’s ass through his boxers.

Fitz pulled away just far enough to look at Mack, panting hard. “This is great, but I was serious about the wanking,” Fitz said, enthusiasm dimming the tiniest bit. “I haven’t been able to get it right since my hands stopped working properly. I can do the, the general maneuver,” Fitz said, demonstrating a jerking motion with a loosely curled fist that was crude and awkward and made Mack humiliatingly hot anyway. “It’s not enough. I need more, I need you to…”

“All right, then,” Mack said, looking around quickly. "Where do you keep your lube? Or do you use hand lotion?"

“I don't have any. I don't really, uh, need it if it’s just me," Fitz said. “You’ll see, I guess.”

Mack groaned and tightened his hands on Fitz’s hips, not really sure what the words meant, but looking forward to finding out really soon. He tugged at the elastic of Fitz’s underwear, a question, and Fitz pushed them eagerly down his thighs and sat back on his knees. His cock bounced into view, dark pink and wet at the tip, the head pushing up out of foreskin, growing harder as Mack watched.

“Show me what you like,” Mack said, trying to sound encouraging instead of demanding and desperate.

“Ugh, okay,” Fitz sighed, which was less than promising, but Mack quickly understood why. Fitz’s hand started up a graceless, jerky rhythm, and his fist seemed to tighten and loosen randomly, unable to maintain the right amount of pressure. Fitz tried something more complicated with his fingers at the head of his cock, but Mack couldn’t quite tell what Fitz was aiming for. Fitz breathed a frustrated grunt and dropped his other hand to his balls, fumbling at them in a way that clearly didn’t feel all that good. Fitz’s erection started to flag right in front of him, and Mack realized he needed to step in before Fitz lost interest completely.

“Take a break for a moment,” Mack urged, running his hands up Fitz’s sides, and Fitz dropped his hands away from himself with an unhappy sound.

“See?” Fitz gritted. “It’s not—I can’t—”

“So we’ll figure it out. Turn around, sit the other way,” Mack suggested. Fitz let him rearrange them so that Fitz sat back in the vee of Mack’s legs, the maneuver made awkward from the boxers still keeping his legs trapped. Mack tucked his hands under Fitz’s shirt and ran his hands over his belly in a warm circle as Fitz kicked his boxers the rest of the way off. Once that was done, Mack pulled Fitz’s body against him a little more firmly, indulging himself for a brief moment by pressing his aching cock into the small of Fitz’s back and mouthing at his neck.

“What now?” Fitz asked, breath starting to come faster already.

“Now I’ll give it a try,” Mack murmured into his ear. “Just let me know if I get it right, and then we’ll practice together. That sound good?”

“Oh god,” Fitz groaned, “yes, hurry, all of it, do it now.” He started a full-body heave against Mack, hands gripping his thighs for leverage, starting to lose it already before they’d even started.

“Just—wait a moment,” Mack soothed. “Before we start—look at me, Fitz, this is important,” he urged. Fitz tipped his head back and to the side to look up at Mack, eyes wild but focused. “If you don’t like something we do, anything, you can say no any time. I’ll stop, no questions, no judgment. Same for me, too. Okay?” 

“Okay,” Fitz nodded, swallowing hard. “Yeah. Yes.”

“Good,” Mack said. “So, what do you want to do first?”

“I guess—what I was doing before?” Fitz hazarded. “What you watched me do? With, um, hands?”

“All right,” Mack agreed, dragging his palms flat down Fitz’s thighs. “Can I start?”

“Yes,” Fitz gasped, spurred into movement again, “yes, please, ngh,” making a noise that was going to stay with Mack a long, long time as he finally wrapped a hand around Fitz’s leaking cock.

Whoa, leaking a lot. “Fuck, Fitz. Are you always this wet? Is this what you meant?” 

“Y-Yeah,” Fitz stuttered, and whined low in his throat when Mack slicked Fitz’s entire cock with one slow stroke from tip to base. Mack watched over Fitz’s shoulder as more shiny fluid slowly dripped out of the slit and traveled down the side of his cock, caught up by Mack’s fingers as they slid Fitz’s foreskin up and down in a near frictionless glide. Mack remembered, suddenly, Fitz’s fingers attempting something different than a simple up-and-down when he’d tried this solo. Mack tried adding a twist of fingers on the upstroke, running the pads of his fingers down the vein on the underside, squeezing Fitz’s cock right under the head; they all pulled desperate pants from Fitz’s chest, so they were fine enough, but—

“That one,” Fitz groaned, hips flexing, and Mack loosened his grip to let Fitz’s hand slide under his. Mack positioned each of his slippery fingers over Fitz’s, and together they thumbed at the wet head of Fitz’s cock, rubbing the slick around, pressing at the slit.

“Is that good?” Mack murmured in Fitz’s ear, voice pitched low. “Is this it?”

“Yes, that one,” Fitz panted, voice cracking. “This is it, I couldn’t figure out, that’s perfect...”

Mack kept Fitz’s hand busy on his cock while he dropped his other hand down to cup at Fitz’s sack, rub the skin between two fingers, feel the fuzz there, and—

“ _That one_.” Fitz’s free hand joined in, and together they tugged and rolled his balls gently against his palm, pressing right behind with their fingers. Fitz pulled in wet, heaving breaths as Mack worked their hands on his body, and Mack hazarded a guess that this was closer to relief than Fitz had managed in a while. He licked a wet stripe up the side of Fitz’s neck, fit his lips and teeth against the skin of his shoulder. Mack was getting pretty desperate too, his own cock caught in the space between their bodies, tight and warm but not quite enough. Don’t be selfish, he told himself, but he couldn’t help—if Fitz wasn’t 100% completely into it he’d back off immediately—

“Can I,” Mack begged, tapping a finger lower, not quite there but probably enough for Fitz to understand—

“Yes, that one, that one,” Fitz babbled, bending a knee and hooking his foot on the outside of Mack’s leg. He dug a heel into the mattress eagerly. Mack groaned, feeling like the air was being punched out of him, and brushed their fingers lower, pressed just the sweaty tip of Fitz’s finger inside himself, their other hands dripping wet now and squeezing tight around Fitz’s warm cock, and Fitz arched hard and came on a long, long moan, come striping his shirt and running over their hands. 

Fitz took a few minutes to come down, panting hard, making an occasional hitching moan. Mack nuzzled gently at his ear, enjoying the way Fitz had gone boneless in his arms. Still, he was aware of a single thought flapping hysterically around in his mind: whether it would be okay if Mack took his hand back, just for a moment, so that he could taste the come on it.

Fitz heaved himself up suddenly. Mack’s hands dropped away in surprise, but Fitz just turned his body around so that he was kneeling between Mack’s legs again. 

“I’ve never, uh,” Fitz said. His hands were clumsy and unsure as they both curled around Mack’s cock, wet with his own come and just a shade too tight, and Mack pushed up into it over and over again with his eyes squeezed closed. His hands moved to grip Fitz’s hips and then his ass, one still-wet hand having to clench a little harder to keep from sliding around.

“This is perfect,” Mack gritted out, opening his eyes, and huffed a shaky laugh at the deeply dubious look Fitz laid on him. “I’m serious, I’m so fucking close, Fitz, I don’t really need that much finesse. Just—”

Fitz shut him up with his mouth and sucked the words off his tongue. His hands on Mack were awkward, his rhythm unsteady, too slow and then too fast, overeager grip too tight and then not tight enough, and it was so good Mack couldn’t breathe.

 

* * *

 

“Pocket poker,” Jemma declared.

“Johnson Junior,” Tripp threw in. “Junior Johnson? Whatever, works either way.”

“Noodle knob,” Fitz said. He nudged Mack with his knee: their signal.

“Willy Wonka,” Mack sighed. “Guys, as fun as this always is, I think we might turn in for the night.“

“Wait, wait, I’m gonna win this,” Skye cut in. “Sploot flute.”

“Illegal!” Jemma called. “This round is alliteration, not rhyme. Skye, take a drink.”

Skye scowled at the group, but no one budged. “C’mon, I’ve been saving that one since last week! That was a fucking awful name! You guys should—“ 

“ _Spurt Reynolds_ ,” May broke in over comms.

Everybody groaned and took a drink at the same time to block it from their memory. It wasn’t alliterative, but May swept the round anyway by the rules of Collective Amnesia Amnesty: if your answer was so horrifying that everyone tried to forget it happened, you won by default.

“And with that gem, this round of Post-Mission Drink-Up: Rename Hunter’s Yankee Doodle Dandy is officially over,” Bobbi announced. “Good hustle, guys. Next time, the theme is food. Come prepared with new names.” 

The team all hooted and laughed, except Hunter, who regretted many things.

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to jujuberry136 for the beta!


End file.
